Jaed Coffin drew a diagonal line on an easel pad and called it the spine. That’s the idea of identity, he told a room of writers at a presentation Friday. Coffin drew a wavy line that curved along the diagonal one, and called it the narrative. Then he shaded in dots where the lines intersected. […]
A roomful of writers laughed after Aaron Hamburger noted that nipples shouldn’t be compared to cherries, pencil erasers or Frankenstein’s neck bolts—at least not in literature. “Metaphors should be used to make things clear,” the Stonecoast faculty member said during his presentation. “But we’re all adults, here. I think we’re clear on what a penis […]
During yesterday’s presentation on music and improvisation, Gil Helmick and his band inspired the writers in the room to face their fears off the page. “I’ve actually watched my work change before my eyes while I’m performing,” he said. “Line breaks go. I’ll toss lines over my shoulder like they’re dead birds.” Helmick’s presentation Poetry, […]
A guy walks into a bar. Or is it a Middle Eastern novelty store? A coffee shop? Well, he’s somewhere in northern Japan, nursing a drink and tapping his fingers as “Lady/ Day simmers overhead”. The guy’s an expatriate, disillusioned by his country’s prejudice against people of color and the queer community—both of which marked him […]
My introduction to nature poems came 11 years ago, when I was a freshman in a poetry class at the University of Maryland-College Park. Reading those poems by a handful of white writers was like looking at a painting of a bowl of fruit. Nothing moved in their poems. There was no narrative or deep […]
Snagglepuss is bitter. He airs his frustrations with the Pink Panther on E! True Hollywood Story, after their short-lived love affair: “When the big money came calling Ol’ Pinky packed his bags and gave me some song and dance about how I’d never have to work again […]” (from “Snagglepuss Spills his Guts on E! […]
In both Ruth L. Schwartz’s Edgewater and Brian Gilmore’s Elvis Presley is Alive and Well and Living in Harlem, the speakers tempt God: “tell me why you ever thought/ you could improve on this/ music, this hunger[1]”. They call out the crazy notions floating around in both American history and its politics. The difference between […]
The speakers in Ross Gay’s Against Which and Paul Martínez Pompa’s My Kill Adore Him are not afraid to step into taboo territory. They’re not afraid to question or dare anyone: “What-chu gonna do now?[1]” Whether choking out a drunk[2] or stepping to sucker mcs[3], they don’t back out of situations in which they find […]
After reading Dorianne Laux’s Smoke and Cornelius Eady’s Brutal Imagination, some things have been affirmed for me: that the dead do haunt the living, and in various forms. In these two collections, what haunts is the ghost of “a girl in a cotton slip” who sits “beneath the staircase/ built from hair and bone[1]”; it’s […]
Editor’s note: I’m currently a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA) candidate in the Stonecoast program at the University of Southern Maine. Below is a look at one of my favorite poets, Stephen Dobyns, and his use of voice in his collections Black Dog, Red Dog and Cemetery Nights. If Black Dog, Red Dog and Cemetery […]
Alan W. King 